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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: January 17th, 2022

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  • Agree but nobody forces you to use anything except ProtonMail or ProtonVPN. In fact I have a visionary account and I mostly just use ProtonMail. I do use ProtonVPN but I also have WireGuard. Also my ProtonMail addresses are behind domains I host. If tomorrow I decide to switch away from Proton, I can.

    So… sure Proton is not perfect and centralization is bad but IMHO it’s like saying Firefox is imperfect so it’s fine to use Chrome or Chromium browsers. Imperfect alternatives to BigTech and surveillance capitalism is better than relying on the things you hate until something “perfect” never comes along.



  • something watching, logging connections to everyone connected to that torrent

    Might be, FWIW there are quite a few ways to torrent in a rather private way, namely require encrypted connection, have a blocklist, require to be behind a VPN, etc … but in the end you still share data with strangers, that’s the core premise. The whole point is to facilitate the sharing of data reliably but then who joins the pool is outside of the protocol itself.







  • Can’t talk about AMD but I’m on NVIDIA and I always followed https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers and never had issues others seem to be having. I typically hear good things about AMD GPU support, on Debian and elsewhere so I’m surprised.

    Now in practice IMHO GPU support doesn’t matter much for NAS, as you’re probably going headless (no monitor, mouse or keyboard). You probably though do want GPU instruction set support for transcoding but here again can’t advise for this brand of GPU. It should just be relying on e.g. https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Hardware/AMF

    Finally I’m a Debian user and I’m quite familiar with setting it up, locally on remotely. I also made ISOs for RPi based on Raspbian so this post made me realize I never (at least I don’t remember) installed Debian headlessly, by that I mean booting on a computer with no OS all the way to getting a working ssh connection established on LAN or WiFi. I relied on Imager for RPi configuration or making my own ISO via a microSD card (using dd) but it made me curious about preseeding wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed so I might tinker with it via QEMU. Advices welcomed.

    PS: based on few other comments, consider minidlna over more complex setups. Consider Wireguard over tailscale (or at least headscale for a version relying solely on your infrastructure) with e.g. wg-easy if you want to manage everything without 3rd parties.



  • Pay for stuff if you want something reliable and supporting your privacy. Sure test the free tier to make sure it fits your requirements but please do consider not sticking to it.

    Might be Filen (don’t know of it) or Hetzner Storage Box (~10e/month for 5TB iirc) or Proton Drive (Visionary customers have a large quantity, e.g. >6TB) or whatever else you prefer but if you do not actually help people providing services by funding their work they you are supporting BigTech and their “free plans” that comes precisely at the cost of our collective privacy.


  • IMHO fix whatever you can, donate it all locally (HackerSpace, RepairCafe, Linux non-profit, etc) as there are quite a few people dedicated to refurbishing computers for schools, people who need a computer to find work, etc.

    Then for the tinkering aspect, keep one, that’s enough.

    Honestly even 1 isn’t really required. Pretty much everything listed here can be done more efficiently without an actual physical computer :

    • your current computer can be a server, just turn off the screen or even accept (which I’d argue is a fair assumption) that at night it will be off. If you want external access put WireGuard or another VPN on it.
    • Want to test distributions or anything else? QEMU or containers, no need for actual hardware





  • Half a dozen people said so already but I’ll repeat :

    backup your stuff.

    You are like a tightrope walker on a high line without security. Sure the view is amazing, yes you feel free… but a misstep and that’s it.

    How? Well depends what your data is but start simple, copy your most important files, e.g. family photos, personal notes, etc (NOT HD movies from the Internet… not anything you can get elsewhere) on a USB stick you go stuffed in a drawer.

    Once you DO have your stuff saved though, please, pretty please DO go crazy! Have fun, try weird stuff, bork your installation… and restart from a neat safe place. It’s honestly amazing to learn, so deeply empowering for yourself and those around you. Just make sure your data don’t suffer from it.


  • reMarkable isn’t about replacing books. You can have a PocketBook with KOReader for 120EUR. It’s not a price per book comparison, IMHO it’s a price per sketch and thus ideas, work, presentations, etc because that’s where reMarkable is unique, low latency e-ink writing.

    For “just” reading there are plenty of alternatives, including cheaper alternatives.